Microsoft Adds Security Features to Exchange - Product Information

ENT, Oct 6, 1999 by Brian Ploskina

Microsoft Corp. announced that Service Pack 3 for Exchange Server 5.5, which includes security enhancements, is now available as a free download.

Service Pack 3 (SP3) is a cumulative release that contains fixes to server issues that were previously available as Microsoft Quick Fix Engineering (QFE) patches and a few feature enhancements and utilities. Microsoft is recommending that customers apply it as soon as possible.

A new feature in the service pack is the Mailbox Manager Service, a tool for enforcing corporate e-mail retention policies. Using the service, administrators can configure the mailbox manager to delete messages based on criteria such as message age, message size, folder location and server. It can be scheduled to run automatically at off-peak times.

Another service is the Anti-Virus Interface for use by third parties to plug in anti-virus software. The interface hooks the attachment processing in the Exchange store.

Finally, the MTA Mixer enables the creation of either algorithmic or configurable mappings between X.400 and SMTP addresses, which can be useful to customers relaying messages between these two types of networks.

The full Exchange Server 5.5 package now includes Microsoft Outlook 2000 and Outlook for the Macintosh. These inclusions only come on the disk version, however, not the Web download. SP3 contains several previously released tools for coexistence, including Importer for Lotus cc:Mail Archives, Lotus Notes Connector, IBM Office Vision/VM Connector, SNADS Connector and Exchange Calendar Connector.

Previously released tools for migration include LDAP and IMAP Extractors for the Exchange Migration Wizard, Exchange Migration Wizard, Language Packs, Lotus cc:Mail Mirgration Directory Toolkit, Lotus Notes Importer, Migration Connector for Novell GroupWise, More Server Wizard and Schedule+ (SC2) File Import Utility for Microsoft Outlook.

More information and downloads are available on Microsoft's Web site at www.microsoft.com/exchange/deployadmin/sp3.htm.